Analog Digital Clock

Maarten Baas (Dutch, born Germany
1978)

2009

Digital video (color, silent), 12 hrs.

Maarten Baas’s Analog Digital Clock,
available as an iPad or iPhone app as
well as a Blu-ray film, appears, at first
glance, to be a classic digital clock
adapted for mobile devices and screens.
In fact it is a videotaped performance
of an actor painting or erasing sections
of the digital display numbers, minute
by minute, by hand, elegantly combining
the analog and digital worlds. Time is
presented here as a highly physical, even
labor-intensive process, like the clock
machine in Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927).
Analog Digital Clock was created as part
of Baas’s Real Time series, a set of four
works in which people’s actions, rather
than traditional clocks, demonstrate
the passage of time: the hands of the
clock are drawn (in Grandfather Clock),
constructed from swept garbage
(Sweepers Clock), and indicated by
people in three different time zones
(World Clock).